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How to Handle Some Common Workforce Issues

July 12th, 2017

If productivity and efficiency are lagging in your workforce, and revenue is not what it should be, even though market conditions are favorable, there are some employee issues that need to be looked at. Here are a few common ones that impact productivity.

1. Poor project management
Projects, if not handled properly, can become boondoggles. If planning is not done carefully enough, or their goals or purpose are not clearly defined, or there is little oversight, they can simply become a waste of time and a drag on resources.

Those working on the project need to be flexible. Things seldom go exactly as planned without any glitches. Project managers need to be able to react quickly and solve problems as they arise. One way to help people become more adept at project management is through six sigma green belt certification.

Company leadership should plan weekly meetings with managers to talk about progress.

2. Employee engagement problems
Companies that are successful have employees who are engaged. The more engaged people are, the productive they are as well. People who are engaged put their best effort into the job. They do whatever needs to be done to make things work.

Disengaged workers, on the other hand, deliver poor customer service and take up managers’ time with things that are unrelated to the goals of the company.

To increase engagement, companies can do things like profit sharing, giving more feedback to workers,

3. Not following accepted policies and procedures
Companies spend a lot of time and effort to set up processes and procedures that enable the greatest productivity, safety, and quality. But employees do not always follow these processes and procedures.

To find out where the problem is, employees need to record the procedures and processes they follow at work. There is now software that even makes this easier to do. They may also need to undergo some training to make sure they understand the procedures they need to use. After they have finished the training, they need to sign a copy of the procedures to confirm that they know what to do.

4. Remote workers who are out of touch
Today it is much more common for people to work remotely. But if companies do not have a lot of experience handling remote workers, it is easy to make mistakes managing them and monitor their work effectively.

One of the biggest problems is linking them up with others who are working on projects. To do this effectively, companies can now rely on cloud-based software. These tools enable everyone to stay connected and up to date no matter where they are working.